Mixed Feelings? Comparing the Effects of Perceived Red Tape and Job Goal Clarity on HRM Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment Across Central Government, Government Agencies, and Businesses

In the past decades, increasing attention in the public sector has been paid to the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational commitment. The bureaucratic structure of public organizations has often been mentioned to have a negative impact on this relationship. To reduce red tape and increase goal clarity, governments worldwide have created semi-autonomous agencies that operate at arm’s length, expecting that they would operate under more business-like conditions with positive effects on organizational commitment. In this study, these positive expectations were tested using groups of employees working at central government, two types of agencies, and businesses. Using multigroup structural equation modeling with a Dutch data set containing 2,432 respondents, the findings provide little support for the notion that agencies are similar to businesses in terms of bureaucracy and ways to stimulate employee commitment, and even indicate that some agencies are more bureaucratic than central government.